Belief 7 - Reading 9 of 13, The Reconstruction Convention

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Belief 7 - Reading 9 of 13

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THE FALL TRADE

Harper's Weekly, September 16, 1865, pages 578-579 (Editorial)

We are in September, and it is now safe to say that the fall trade of the city of New York will be the largest ever known. The country is buying goods in unprecedented quantities, at prices not far below those of the period when gold was at 250. Payment is being generally made in cash; where credits are given they are short. Western men, from every State, arrive in the city with wallets stuffed with greenbacks and national currency. Of the later such large amounts have been brought to town that the banks are inconvenienced, and are packing it up in bundles and sending it west for redemption. There is hardly a branch of general trade that is not unusually active and prosperous. The dry-goods and hardware dealers can not keep any stock on hand, though the importations and the product of the factories are unprecedented; the produce men are as busy as bees; the grocers can sell all the teas, coffees, sugars, and spices that can be pushed through the custom-house, without once going to look for a purchaser. Not even in the height of the war, when any thing was deemed better than money, was the trade of New York city more active or more profitable.

Nor is the South far behind the West in our markets. Notwithstanding all that has been said about the poverty of the South, purchasers from that section are arriving here in droves, and all seem able to pay for what they want. Of course, merchants are not over-anxious to sell on credit to the men who made the rebellion an excuse for cheating their Northern creditors. But every one is willing to sell for cash; and this, or cotton, which amounts to the same thing, Southern buyers seem to possess to an amount entirely unexpected. Even to places which were overrun by Sherman, in his great march, goods have been sold for cash within the past months for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the money paid in greenbacks. One little store at Wilmington, North Carolina, established by Northern men, is selling $3000 of goods a day—all for cash or cotton.

A curious illustration of the effect of the war is afforded by the nature of the purchases which are being made for the South. Before the war the chief commodities required for the South were luxuries, such as silks, laces, wines, jewels, etc., on the one hand, and the coarsest kind of dry goods and farm implements on the other. Now the South is taking no jewels, no silks or wines, and but small quantities of the class of dry goods formerly used for the wear of slaves; but there is no limit to the Southern demand for a fair quality of dry goods such as Northern mechanics use, for groceries, and for every description of tools and machinery. The white trash, for the first time in history, are making themselves felt in the market, vice planter and slave vamosed.

When we last spoke of the probable quantity of cotton to come forward from the South, we mentioned that the best-informed men estimated the stock on hand at 1,500,000 bales. It is now clear that this estimate fell considerably short of the truth. But it was so generally received that the price has been maintained; and if the South have only 2,000,000 bales, this quantity will net its owners more money than was ever before realized for a single crop. A bale of cotton will now buy fifteen barrels of flour instead of five as formerly; five barrels of sugar instead of 1 ½; twice as much dry goods and thrice as much hard or tin ware as it used.

No one is drawing attention to the emigration from the North to the South. Yet it is a very remarkable feature of the times. Before the war the Charleston and Savannah steamers charged $15 and $20 for cabin passages, and did a light business. Now, the charge is $50 for cabin and $25 for steerage, and the steamers sail so full that to secure a passage application must be made several days beforehand. A similar increase of business is reported on the railroads running south through Ohio and Kentucky.

Nor is this at all to be wondered at. A competent mechanic—printer, bricklayer, carpenter, mason, engineer, waver, shoemaker, tailor, baker, blacksmith, tinsmith, or miller—can now command wages in the South more than double the average of past years. We risk nothing in saying that competent carpenters, shipwrights, blacksmiths, masons, and millers can obtain steady employment in many Southern States at not less than $10 a day. Common day laborers are not wanted. Negroes abound to do work which requires no preliminary education. But skilled labor is in such demand that the laborers can dictate terms. Every railroad-bridge, culvert, and station at the South requires rebuilding. Many towns are in the same condition. And the people stand in need of every thing which skilled labor can produce; and have the means, in the shape of cotton, to pay for what they want.

Harper's Weekly, September 16, 1865, pages 578-579 (Editorial)

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